


moments in the snow

by tigrrmilk



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, M/M, diefenbaker is fraser's demon, learning to live with yourself, lots of snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23919001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/pseuds/tigrrmilk
Summary: Ray combs his fingers through the patch of fur worst hit, and although he’s not looking at Fraser, he can feel him stand to attention.“I don’t know why I always get taken in by this act. You’re not even a real dog,” he grouses, happily, as Dief licks his hand. “Just sit by the fire and it’ll dry. Or get Fraser to wash you. See if I care.”
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Comments: 7
Kudos: 91





	moments in the snow

**Author's Note:**

> this is a daemon AU, but it's slightly more focused on the prejudices and cultural assumptions that a society might create in a world where daemons exist than on the actual _daemons_. although they're in there too. 
> 
> more information (alongside some warnings) in the end notes.

The rain is slanted, almost horizontal. It hits the glass like bullets. It sounds like hail; maybe it is hail. Ray stares out of the car window, not seeing any of it.

What he sees, instead, is a day maybe only a month or so ago. He was walking somewhere -- nowhere in particular, for once -- with Fraser. Fraser was wearing his big dumb red jacket, even though he wasn’t working. Neither of them was. And suddenly the sky broke open, and there they both were, covered in little balls of ice. So much hail on Fraser’s hat. And...

“I’m starting to see the benefits of this hat thing,” Ray said, scrubbing at his hair. If he wasn’t so diligent about taking care of his dye-job, he guessed it would look like dandruff. Mega dandruff. A joke about dandruff.

“Ray,” Fraser started. He put his hand on Ray’s hand to stop Ray’s hand from moving. Ray’s fingers burn with the memory. Then Fraser looked up at the sky and stuck out his tongue. Diefenbaker was doing the same thing, Ray noticed. _Freaks_.

What were they up to? _Forecasting_.

In retrospect, Ray guesses, he should have seen all of this coming.

Ray shakes his head to clear his sight -- no, his eyes are as blurry and good for nothing as ever. To clear his _head_. And he realises with a start that Fraser still has _his glasses_. Fat lot of good that is now.

The memory slides from his view like all that rain, washing away.

Jadzia puts her head on his knee. The weight and warmth comforts him, even though he knows that she’d rather be out there. Even though it seems unnatural for her to be this still when there’s still so much to do, so much to sort out.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ray says, and scratches the patch just behind her left ear. She twitches at him in response, but doesn’t say anything. Ray feels too big, or too small for his skin; he knows she feels it too. It’s their goddamn _speciality_. And here they are -- stuck in a stupid car, waiting for someone to drive them away to... who the fuck knows. “I hate this too.”

\---

Ray had never actually met Ray Vecchio. Not until the ultimate fuck-up, the big fucking reckoning. Blowing everybody’s cover. _Thanks Frase_. So to start with, he’d mostly just gone through all the guy’s case notes and reports. Other than that, he was given photos of him -- enough that Ray knew they looked absolutely shit-all alike -- and photos of his daemon. Plenty. A whole shoebox of polaroids, practically. Ray flicked through them, and there was enough there that he knew one thing already about his not-double: Ray Vecchio’s family loved him.

“Hey,” Ray said. Jadzia was sulking and didn’t want to pay attention. She was still pissed off that he’d taken the assignment in the first place. He held two photos out to her and pointed at Vecchio’s daemon. “That’s, uh, Euphraxia.”

“I hate that name.”

“Well, you’re answering to it,” Ray said. “I say _Euphraxia_ in public, you act like maybe you heard me.”

Jadzia bristled, but didn’t answer. She knew they didn’t have many other options. And Ray knew that the situation sucked, and there wasn’t much more to add than that. “ _This is what we do.”_

Before he fell asleep that night, Ray stuck up two of the Ray Vecchio polaroids on his wall. Just as a reminder of -- something. Near the front door to his apartment. So that before he left in the morning, he would be reminded of who he was, who he was meant to be. Who _they_ were meant to be.

It wouldn’t be forever.

\---

“I don’t even get to meet the guy?” Ray had said, scowling. He kicked at the table leg. This was the weirdest fucking undercover gig they’d ever come to him with.

“Not this time, Kowalski.” Welsh was tired. The FBI had come to take away one of his detectives only a few days earlier. From what Ray’d heard already, he sorta guessed that it was a lightning flash, no what’s the phrase, thunder raining down, _a bolt from the fucking blue_ kind of deal -- that they only had a second to fill the opening in the mob. They grabbed their guy, and left the rest of them to pick up the pieces and wash the blood and guts out of the carpet.

It’s fine, it’s cool. Ray’s been a detective -- a detective with a fairly good sideline in undercover work -- for long enough that he knows how it goes with the feds. And if he sometimes wonders how come it’s never him who gets the call-up for the serious mob work, or whatever, he’s pretty happy to admit to himself that he’s _glad_. Undercover as a cop, he can do. He already _is_ a cop. He knows how to be a cop. He doesn’t love the job, but he can _do_ it. The part he’s not so sure about is the rest of his life. And hey! Welsh and the 2-7 are happy to help him out with that. Happy to help him out by just replacing it all for a while. Putting his old life in cold storage.

It’s just. Ray spent a _good while_ poring over the stuff they’d sent him to try and get him to take the job before the meeting with Welsh. And, well.

“This all seem kinda screwy to you?” Ray said. Standing in the doorway, like he didn’t know if he was coming or going.

“Detective,” Welsh said, heavily. “You’re not wrong. Kinda screwy doesn’t even begin to cover the _half_ of it.”

Ray found himself doing his not-quite smile. Like a dog showing its fangs. Sharp. Momentary. A challenge. He almost immediately tried to soften it with a shrug, and didn’t know what to say. He could feel Jadzia admonishing him, as if she was any better at this. “ _Idiot,”_ said under her breath.

Meanwhile, she was cowering under the gaze of Welsh’s daemon Clodagh, an owl with tawny feathers and big claws.

 _I think she can see through me_ , Jadzia always complained after an encounter. It’s like: under the owl gaze she’s reduced to dust and air and ash. She’s barely even there.

See. The thing is that Kowalski worked as a beat cop under Welsh. And most of his first year as detective. And this isn’t their first go at collaborating on an undercover gig. Ray likes Welsh. Which is a pretty rare and precious thing to be able to say about a boss, and it’s like, half the reason that he considered the gig as Vecchio in the first place.

But there’s something about working for Welsh that gets under his skin. Like, Ray’s almost afraid to meet his eyes sometimes. Which then makes him want to stare Welsh out until he gets punched, or at least chewed out. Because Ray’s an asshole.

It’s like this: his dad might have been the reason Ray applied to college, but his 12th grade English teacher was the reason he actually decided to _go_. And he was terrified of her because she actually liked his work, and didn’t mark him down too much because he couldn’t spell for shit or because he sometimes got a word wrong. And then one time in his final week before graduation, he found himself yelling at her and walking out of the classroom -- and the school. Just because of something stupid that he didn’t understand and didn’t want to ask her about.

He bumped into her like eight years later, when he was working his beat. He was kind of ashamed when she recognised him -- both because of the shouting, and because he’d dropped out of college to become a cop. But she’d just smiled at him and said she was glad he was doing well. What the fuck was _that_ about.

Welsh is like that. Ray’s not sure he knows how to impress him, or he feels like he can’t do _enough_ to impress him, so sometimes he just... feels like maybe it’s best if he just pisses Welsh off, and makes him hate his guts instead. And it’s fucked up because Ray’s the wrong side of 35 now, he’s not 18. He shouldn’t still be playing this game. And yet. And yet. And yet. Life is a stupid loop. He muttered it under his breath.

 _“You’re a stupid loop.”_ A tinny echo in one ear. Thanks, Jadzia.

“Look, I’ll do it,” he said, as if there was any question. “What else have I got going on?” He drew a big circle in the air with his thumb to indicate _total. Fucking. Nada_. “But I’m not dyeing my fucking hair this time, OK.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary,” Welsh said. His mouth twitched slightly. Yeah, Ray’d seen the photos. Hair dye was the _least_ of their worries there. “I don’t think _your_ appearance is really the concern here.”

Welsh handed over the rest of the paperwork, and a box of personal effects and family stuff. And yes, all of those polaroids too. And what did he say before Kowalski went back to his apartment to try and make over practically his whole sad-sack life?

“Good to be working with you again, Kowalski.” Just like that. You see? Made Ray want to scream a bit. Or start punching the walls.

“Yeah, but that ain’t my name,” Ray said, and grinned.

\---

When Ray meets Fraser for the first time, he goes in for a quick, like, back-slapping hug. That’s what friends do, right? Manly hugs. Ray’s pretty sure that if he had friends then it’d be like that. Great. Greatness.

Only it turns out pretty quickly that nobody’s _briefed the mountie_ , and if Welsh doesn’t deal with this he’s going to blow the whole fucking cover.

The best part is when Fraser spots Jadzia. He stops dead in his tracks. His half-wolf, too. Dief approaches Jadzia and smells her, as if it’s a trick. He backs up, confused. Ray doesn’t got a clue what she smells like. Probably stale office air and corn chips. None of the aftershave he bets Vecchio covers everything in given half a chance --

Anyway, it _is_ a trick. But at least Jadzia’s part of it is a convincing one. Ray’s always going to be a second-rate con job. But she’s as close to the real thing as it gets.

“Hey, Euf,” Ray says. And she climbs onto his shoulder with angry grace. He can feel the pissiness radiating off her in waves. It’s comforting, really. When Ray can’t get angry himself, it’s nice to know that Jadzia can be angry for him. She’s pure and strange and true in a way that Ray struggles to mirror. It’s part of -- it’s part of their whole _thing_.

So, Fraser is flummoxed. And Ray knows why: Ray Kowalski does not look like Ray Vecchio. Not one bit. He’d bet they don’t move or sound the same, either. But Jadzia looks _exactly_ like Euphraxia.

A sleek mongoose with brown fur and golden flecks. Kind of pretty, Ray supposes. Unexpected, but pretty. She starts to nibble on his ear. “Quit it,” he murmurs, so only she can hear. “We got this job to do.” He takes a deep breath, and he smells only air.

\---

Much later, Ray tries to ask Fraser how the half-wolf thing can even _happen_. Like, how do you know? But he runs out of words halfway through, and he stops. Instead, he just watches Dief perform some kind of mad animal dance in the snow. Ray is sure that actual wolves do _not_ behave like that. And then Jadzia puts a paw out into the snow in his direction, thinks for a second, and takes it back. A few flakes stick to her fur.

“You want to be out there, huh,” Ray says to her, and he can feel his mouth twisting a bit. “But you’re stuck here with me.” He is so tired and beaten-in and tomorrow they have to do it _again_. They’re just standing by Ray’s car. Watching. Ready for the day to end.

Fraser snorts, as if Ray was talking to him. “Hardly,” he says. But there’s something. There’s something knocking around in Ray’s brain. Maybe if he keeps rattling it around he’ll work it out -- the size of it. The shape.

“Were you going to ask me a question, Ray?” Fraser asks, once they’re safely all inside Ray’s car and halfway towards his apartment.

“What?”

“When we were leaving the station,” Fraser says. “Ah. It felt like you were formulating a question, perhaps.”

“Right,” Ray says, and drums a hand on the steering wheel. The question. He’d just been going to let it drop. _How do you know?_ And then Fraser says, in Ray’s head, How do I know what, Ray?

“How do you know he’s a half-wolf,” Ray asks, finally, with his words. It sounds stupid. “It’s not like he’s got a whatsit called, certificate.”

“Crossbreeds don’t tend to get certificates, Ray,” Fraser says. “Not to mention that as a daemon...”

“Right, that’s what I’m saying,” Ray said, and glances sideways at Fraser for a second while they wait at a stop sign. He wants to know how seriously he’s supposed to take this conversation. It’s always hard to tell with Fraser. “No _certificate_ , no wolf ma. Most normal people settle for just one type of animal, you know.”

Fraser stares at him with an intense frown. Ray is careful to keep his eyes on the road. He is not going to meet that gaze. Only bad things will happen if he meets that gaze.

\---

Ray came so close to blowing the undercover gig before he’d even really got started. The first day that the Mountie came back to town was like, so many alarms going off in his head. _This is a fuck-up, this is a big mistake_. Getting shot in the vest wasn’t even the worst of it. He loved the rush of adventure that immediately set in; he was terrified by it. By the end of the day, Ray was left with ringing in his ears and restless feet, and he had to dance to a terrible old mixtape of ABBA b-sides and Bruce Springsteen songs and Talking fucking Heads for half an hour before he was calm enough to even think about sleeping. Jadzia curled up by his speakers, pointedly not saying anything.

Yeah, she always knew a bad idea when she saw it, and it never stopped them barreling ahead. Besides, she liked the music.

Ray’d made the mix for Stella and it had somehow ended up in his boxes after the divorce. _Stop thinking about it._

So the next morning, Ray woke up, flipped through the paper like he was on some kind of high, like he knew something about the mysteries of the universe suddenly, he fucking _knew_. And there it was. He knew that it was going down. He knew what he was going to have to do. And maybe it would blow this job -- and maybe it would blow up his whole career.

If he got the kind of closure he was looking for, there wouldn’t be a space for him in undercover anymore. Not the kind of space he was used to, anyway. But that was OK. And maybe he’d had enough of being a cop. He didn’t know how to do anything else, but he wasn’t so sure that was a good reason to stick with something, in the end. Where had that got him so far?

 _“If god closes a door, he opens a window._ ” Jadzia was starting to sound like his mom. For a second, Ray saw Vecchio’s notes flash before his eyes. “ _Why does the mountie always climb out of the window when there’s a perfectly good door?_ ” Scribbled in black ink in the margins of an otherwise uninteresting case.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We don’t want to miss the funeral.”

\---

The night after the burning car dumped in Lake Michigan, the bullet in Ray’s vest, the performance arsonist... involves pizza at Ray’s apartment. Which would seem like something too mundane for Ray to even bother remembering, but for two things.

Fraser was there.

Jadzia blew her cover.

The thing about it is that the apartment is Ray’s sacred space; his decompression chamber.

It’s why he doesn’t like to give it up for undercover work. Without it, he’s never not working. And as soon as he steps through the door, he’s back to himself again.

He’s not stupid — someone calls on his cellphone and he’ll say “ _Vecchio_.” But he’s not FBI and he’s not CIA and he’s not got the training or the total fucking desire for self-effacement (yet?) to erase who he is completely. Besides. You hire a Chicago cop called Ray to pretend to be another Chicago cop called Ray when they look nothing alike, you’re maybe not too concerned about him going totally _method_ and changing everything about himself to fit the frame.

So he steps through the door, pizza in hand. So does Jadzia. She jumps onto the counter, scratches unhappily at some crumbs. And then she shifts, before she flies up to the ceiling and does a somersault in mid-air, landing on Ray’s shoulder.

Fraser stops in the doorway and stares. Diefenbaker seems rooted to the spot, too. It’s spooky when they do that, so in-sync with one another. But then Fraser shakes his shoulders like he’s waking himself up, and he regards Ray with more care than Ray cares for.

“Well,” Fraser says. “That answers some questions.”

Ray laughs ruefully. He takes a big bite of pizza and considers his answer. Jadzia sticks her beak in his ear because he’s taking too long to reply and he swats her, gently. He can feel her small body quivering, he can feel the grain of her feathers. She’s smooth and bright and small. He doesn’t even have a _name_ for what she is right now.

“Yeah, she ain’t settled,” he says, finally. “This going to be a problem for you?” Ray can feel rather than see that she’s now changed into a different, bigger bird. Showing off.

Fraser seems surprised by the question. “Well, no,” he says. “Of course not.” He’s trying not to stare at Jadzia — it’s not _polite_ , Ray guesses — but now that he’s seen that she’s different, _how_ she’s different, it’s like he can barely take his eyes off her. Maybe she’s, maybe _they_ are not just a boring photocopy of someone else after all. Jadzia is dealing with this by preening her feathers, and it’s tickling Ray’s neck. But it’s comforting. He likes that she’s there.

Diefenbaker does _not_ care about being polite and he is prowling around Ray’s not-particularly-big apartment like he’s checking for exits.

“It’s just an unusual state of affairs,” Fraser says. “Nobody, ah...” He trails off.

“Nobody warned you that I’m a freak?” Ray supplies, helpfully. “That makes _two_ of us, pal.”

Fraser doesn’t seem particularly keen on this statement. Ray keeps talking anyway. He’s gesturing with a slice of pizza, which now seems to have captured Diefenbaker’s attention, even though Fraser is eating his share _extremely slowly_.

“Look — she’s got to be Euf when we’re out on jobs or outside much at all anyway. So it’s not like she’s going to be freaking you out on the regular.”

“I’m not bothered, Ray,” Fraser says. He rubs at his eyebrow. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”

“Ah, whatever, it was Jadzia, uh Jadzia, who did it.” Ray feels a bit funny and itchy in his own skin, which is usually how he feels when the topic of Jadzia’s _changes_ comes up. Which is why he generally tries to... not have it come up. But hey. The Mountie was likely going to find out at some point, and better have it be now than in the middle of some kind of dramatic shootout or... something.

Ray shakes his head to stop himself from thinking about the plunge into Lake Michigan earlier, Jadzia clinging to the back of his neck, the dirty water, the fact that he can’t swim... and she couldn’t save him without breaking cover. He thinks about the moment of sheer, cold terror. Trying to get air into his lungs.

“Nevertheless,” Fraser says.

—

So by the time the next morning rolls around, and it’s both eclipse day and Marcus Ellery day, Ray is already feeling plenty frayed. Unsettled. Jadzia stays as a mongoose — which is a stupid daemon for a police officer to have, Ray thinks — but other than that he’s not exactly thinking much about his cover gig. He’s not going to blow the cover where he’s going. It’s not his _goal_. But he also doesn’t care too much about what’ll happen to Vecchio’s reputation if he blows off a day at the bullpen instead.

Some things are a matter of life or death. Some things are just a pain in the ass. He’s got two jobs here; he can afford to fuck up at one of them.

Besides. Nobody is actually paying him that much attention.

—

A one-sided conversation, right at the start of the slightly frantic, slightly farcical process of being hired to go undercover as another fucking police officer:

“So, what. Vecchio goes missing and people are going to be out for his blood. They don’t figure that maybe he’s got somewhere better to be, or anything like that. But Ray _Kowalski_ goes missing, what? Nobody notices?” Ray points at himself, unnecessarily, when he says his own name.

An awkward pause. The lieu, folder open on his desk, clearly has no clue what to fucking say. See, this just pisses Ray off. If he pushes, this guy just... breaks. Or at least just waits until Ray’s run out of steam entirely to deal.

“Shit,” Ray says. “And I really _don’t_ have anywhere better to go to.”

Jadzia bristles. She’s taken on the form of a big stupid dog for this job, and she’s sick of it, and Ray’s sick of it. They tend to try and stick to one animal per role if they can help it, and a big animal is better when you’re going on potentially dangerous busts (you never know when you’re going to have to restrain a criminal who’s got a fucking moose trailing his back). But a dog? That was not Ray’s smartest choice. And it led to a stupid fight that Ray’s still smarting from:

“Hey, Kowalski.” That was how Ray’s asshole (soon to be ex-) partner, who was a much bigger asshole than even _Ray_ deserved, liked to address him. Always with the Hey, like he’d just thought of a great new joke to share. Like he was always starting a new conversation.

This particular time, they were on a stakeout, and Ray was chain smoking as a way to deal with the stress of having Birkin and his python in his car.

Ray did not answer. Birkin continued anyway. “So I figure that there’s something screwy with you having a Great Dane.”

Ray tried to crack a knuckle. It wouldn’t pop, but he kept pushing anyway until his eyes started to water.

“See, you’re.” And here Birkin waved his hand at Ray, a dismissal. “You’re small. And I don’t just mean _physical_.”

Ray shifted in his seat and continued to focus really hard on the empty warehouse over the street.

Birkin started listing off reasons on his fingers. He was on a roll. “You suck at taking orders. I saw the lieu threaten you over unfinished paperwork last week, and the week before that. And then there was that raid last month, where you changed the plans last minute and didn’t give me time to adjust. You don’t got no family and you split up with your wife, so loyalty’s a bust...”

Before he knew what was what, Ray grabbed him by the lapels and it was only Jadzia intervening (she bit Ray’s arm, and hard) that stopped him from _breaking Birkin’s face_. “Snake,” she murmured, as Ray tried to blink away the blood pounding in his head.

And then Birkin fucked up the bust, and it was only Ray faking his own death in a really inelegant way that saved their skins. And after that, _Birkin_ had the nerve to request a new partner.

So, yeah. Ray’s working alone right now. Not the ideal situation.

He’s been working hard, violent cases for most of the past eighteen months, and at this point, even putting aside the whole working alone thing, he really, really needs a change. It’s not been a good year and a half for Ray -- personally and emotionally and like, in terms of where he fucking lives and what he does with his free time.

Work has actually not been the worst of it. And isn’t that a kick in the teeth. But every day he gets in, sits at his desk and thinks about how small his life is. Maybe Birkin was right.

Ray puts his hands to his face, briefly, then looks up again. “OK, hand over the folder,” he says.

Maxwell finally starts to whirr into life. “He’s got a big family,” he says, as if that explains anything. Hey, Ray has a family, he just doesn’t exactly talk about them all the time. And his family has like, two parents and a brother. It’s not big, but it ain’t small. “And recently he’s been doing this liaison work with the Canadian Consulate, they’ve dealt with some pretty big cases, so he’s a bit more high-profile than your average detective...”

“Maxwell,” Ray says, flipping through the folder. “ _High-profile?_ I don’t look like this guy.” There’s a photo paperclipped to the first paper in here.

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Maxwell says. “Guy works with a mountie who likes to run around in full dress uniform. I guarantee nobody’s going to be looking at you. Just as long as your daemon...” He trails off and looks at Jadzia.

Maxwell knows that she isn’t settled -- it’s in Ray’s file, and it’s the reason he got started with undercover gigs in the first place -- and Ray figures that it’s why he constantly acts like Ray’s about to either steal his lunch money or start having a breakdown in the middle of the bullpen.

You can’t handle _weird_ , Ray thinks, why the hell would you become a police officer.

But there’s weird and there’s screwy and then there’s just plain fucked-up. Maybe he thinks Ray’s at the wrong end of that spectrum.

“Going to think about it,” Ray says. “Need to talk to Welsh before we take this on.”

The lieu’s racoon daemon pats Jadzia’s head with a little paw, which she’s only able to reach because she’s sitting up on Maxwell’s desk. Jadzia does _not_ like it. Ray tries to smile, but he’s pretty sure it comes out kind of feral. And then he flees.

\---

“Hey, Fraser,” Ray says, at some indeterminate golden point, Ray can never pinpoint it exactly, when life is good and the bad guys haven’t caught up with them yet. It’s early morning and Fraser and Diefenbaker have just come back from a boisterous walk.

“Yes, Ray?”

“Look, Jadzia has uh, settled. She’s found her final form. Ain’t it something.”

Both men stare at Jadzia, the box turtle, who is currently doing her best to run from one side of the room to the other.

“Ah, Ray,” Fraser says. There is a long pause. “I believe that you are pulling my leg.”

“Fraser, there is absolutely no way that you could know that,” Ray says. He sticks his finger into his coffee to check that it’s not too hot to drink, and then takes a large slurp. “Come on Jadzia! Show the wolf how it’s done.”

Diefenbaker has started to race with Jadzia. They are not fairly matched.

“If I may observe a few things,” Fraser says. “First of all, Jadzia does not appear to be well-suited to life as a turtle. Jadzia, no matter what form she takes, tends to move with an easy and fast grace, and she prizes being able to take part in the, ah, action. As a turtle...”

They continue to stare at Jadzia. Ray would privately admit that the speed she is attempting to move at right now is fucking ridiculous. She and Dief are bickering, and then Dief licks a stripe down Jadzia’s shell, and Fraser... is closely observing this instead of talking.

“Second?” Ray says.

“Hmm?” Fraser says, tearing himself away.

“I’m waiting nice and patient for your second reason that Jadzia can’t be settled as a turtle.”

Fraser meets Ray’s eyes. Ray is always a bit startled by the strength of his gaze. “Ray. I think it is safe to say that I know you quite well by now. We are friends, are we not.”

Ray nods and takes a sip of slightly too much coffee. He tries not to choke as he says, “Yep. Uh-huh. Totally.”

“Ray... from everything that I know of you, I can confidently say that you are _not_ the sort of man who would have a box turtle for a daemon.”

At this statement, Jadzia becomes a small (but still sizeable) black bear, and engulfs Diefenbaker in a kind of terrifying hug. Ray swallows. “Huh,” he says. “Whaddya know. Maybe I was fucking with you after all.”

\---

When he was a kid, Ray used to wonder how people knew when their daemon had settled, or when it would settle, or what it should look like, behave like. He asked everyone about it, and got really boring and unhelpful answers, because mostly people said a variation on “You just _know_.”

It was when he was eighteen and nothing had happened that he really started to wonder. If maybe he wasn’t just a late bloomer, maybe he wasn’t just getting there a bit after everyone else. Maybe he was fucked-up, permanently. Maybe he had _really_ been damaged that day in the bank, when he thought he was about to be shot over a few bags of cash and his own attempted bravado. Stella’s daemon had settled at twelve, a few weeks before the hold-up. And Ray, who was a few months older, had been so sure that he was about to follow in her footsteps. He was so determined. And then...

It was like... he’d flicked open a lighter a few times and the spark had refused to catch.

Sometimes, even now, Ray lies awake at night and thinks about it, and what it means. And he thinks about pissing himself in the bank. The sheer terror. The shape of his life changing. _It’s stupid,_ he tries to tell himself. _You weren’t even shot_. Jadzia curls up to him tighter, or she licks his face, or she curls her claws into his hair.

 _You were thirteen_ , she says. _We were thirteen_. Ray, remembers that he’s never been so scared. Hell, he remembers the whole thing. In full, 3D surround-sound. Those nights, when he closes his eyes, it’s like he’s back there.

It’s like he never left.

Ray never paid attention in the handful of counselling sessions he got pulled out of school for after the incident. Jadzia did. Sometimes she sounds like the leaflets Ray used to tear up and turn into cigarettes.”Trauma,” she says, in her smoky voice. “It does things.” Yeah, doesn’t Ray know it.

So on those nights he gets up and walks or he dances, or if it’s early or late enough he goes to the boxing gym and tries to tire himself out. It’s how he ends up volunteering there. It’s something. It’s not much to build a life from, but it’s something. It’s not like Ray’s making friends for life. But it’s not like he’s at home on his own every night either.

Look, the truth is that maybe if it was down to him, he wouldn’t mind so much. It’s useful that Jadzia can change, and there’s something freeing about it. Secretly, when she changes it sometimes feels like a relief. And it’s not like he’s known any different. It’s not like he knows if her settling would feel like comfort or terror.

But... every time he meets someone new and they find out about it, it’s like they’re examining him for a crack, a fault-line. _What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you grow up properly, like the rest of us did?_

So when he meets people (especially through work), he tries to just. Not let them know. If he can help it.

“You’re just different,” his mother said, once. Like that would help with anything.

“I don’t want to be different,” Ray said.

He thought, _god, I do sound like a kid_. He was already a police officer, a beat cop, a proper adult. He was _married_. And he just wanted to be less fucking weird. And wanting it didn’t change anything, either.

\---

“Funny name,” Ray says, when he’s reading Fraser’s file over, a day or two before he’s due to arrive back from Canada. Ray’s like an exposed nerve; he’s radiating so much nervous energy that people around him keep falling over or getting angry over nothing. Maybe it’s his superpower.

“Benton?” Frannie says. She puts a hand to her hair, like she’s preening for an imaginary observer. “I like it.”

“Not that one,” Ray says, annoyed even though she’s right. Benton _is_ a weird name. Annoyed because she didn’t, what, read his mind? Get over yourself, Kowalski. “ _Dief-en-baker_ ,” he says, sounding it out.

Frannie’s (always-unexpected) llama nudges its nose into her back. Frannie’s chewing gum, and she rolls her eyes. “Ray, all daemons have stupid names. That’s, like, their _burden_.”

“Frannie,” Ray says. “You know, when they told me I was gonna get a sister out of this whole deal--”

“Two sisters,” Frannie says.

“They said, look Ray, you’ve got a sister now,” Ray says, ignoring her. “I thought, I always wanted a sister. I wonder what it’ll be like. Nobody told me you were a regular philosopher too.”

Frannie hits him on the head with his own unfinished paperwork.

\---

So, with one thing and another, Ray doesn’t really think much of it until Fraser’s there, and Jadzia is sniffing Diefenbaker and batting at his paws. Once they get a moment alone, she nibbles at his ear and says, quietly, “Diefenbaker is male.”

“Yeah,” Ray says, slightly distracted, because it’s been a busy day and like three different things have caught on fire, and he thinks maybe his eyelashes or eyebrows are singed because something smells bad in the general region of his face. “Yeah I think I got that from the name.”

Jadzia isn’t surprised. She’s just like, confirming information.

And then Fraser appears again and they stop discussing it, because something else is on fire somewhere or something, Ray has lost track.

\---

What else? Ray can’t swim, and as a mongoose Jadzia can’t really do much in the water, either. The lake is cold, and not very clean, and it was a nice car, and Ray hates all of this, everything about this lousy fucking day. He’d like a do over. But he has to keep going. And going, and going.

Is it any wonder that all of that... all of that happening in one day leads him to Marcus Ellery the day after?

It’s all your fault, Ray wants to say. You broke me, you screwed up my life, you’re the reason all of this is happening. If you can’t fix it then I should get to fuck you up in return.

\---

Part of Ray thinks that after he confronts Marcus Ellery, if he finds peace, if he follows his footsteps all the way back and starts again anew -- hell, he thinks that maybe finally it will happen. It will click into place. He’ll understand what he wants out of this fucking endless _life_. Or at least Jadzia will settle. He’ll stop being a fuck-up.

Fraser even helps him to practically see the day as a rebirth. There’s an eclipse. He catches and gets rid of his bad dreams. But...

Ray gets into his apartment that night. He’s tired, and shaky from all of the adrenaline and the three coffees he downed at the precinct during his trial-by-fire with the most incompetent IR agents he’s ever met. He does feel different. But he rubs a knuckle over Jadzia’s head, and she becomes a big raven, and then a butterfly, and then she falls asleep on Ray’s chest as a black cat. “Show-off,” Ray says. That’s that.

“Don’t worry about it,” she murmurs, just as Ray’s drifting off too. “Who cares.”

Ray thinks about opening his heart to Fraser and the fucking cigar smugglers and an old woman with a gun. He thinks about his strange, terrible, almost magical day. it’s like remembering a hallucination.

“She can still change,” Ray had said, and he gestured to Jadzia. Speaking to an _audience_ , like he was putting on a one-man show. Jadzia was determinedly silent; she’d never got past the fear of speaking in front of other people that had been drilled into her and Ray as kids. He was on his own in trying to get this across.

“I’m a grown man, and it’s like... If I don’t know who I am, then how am I supposed to live? I’m supposed to keep walking forward?”

“Feels like that’s the only route most of us can take,” one of the cigar smugglers said. They were in the bullpen by now; Ray was filling in his paperwork. Luckily Huey and Dewey were processing an overzealous glee club, so nobody else was paying too much attention to the ongoing crisis of Ray’s life.

“You sound like my marriage counsellor,” Ray said. “And that didn’t work out so well either. Shut it.”

“Ray,” Fraser said. “You know, the wisest people I know freely admit that they don’t know anything. Not _truly_. Not when they’re faced with the world in its totality.”

Marcus Ellery had fallen into his mother’s grave, and Ray had fallen in too. And he’d confronted him, and he’d confronted _it_ , and somehow here he still was, and he was the same Ray Kowalski, undercover as Ray Vecchio, with shaky eyesight and a failed marriage and a daemon that had never settled for one form.

“OK, Fraser,” Ray said. He was scratching at the form with his pencil. He hated paperwork, but it was a thing. It was a thing he could do if he tried. Everything laid out, nice and straightforward.

“In fact, the very act of admitting that you don’t have all the answers, and that you will in all likelihood spend the rest of your life thinking and questioning... to a lot of people, that is what wisdom looks like.”

Ray looked up at Fraser. He felt kind of pleased, and kind of pissed off. “Yeah, but those people aren’t talking about not knowing anything about _themselves_ , are they. No, Fraser, I’m willing to bet you that they are not. They’re talking about, I don’t know, the shape of the universe, or why god lets bad things happen to nice people, right?”

Fraser rubbed at his eyebrow. “Ah, I would say rather that they’re talking about, that is to say, the nature of knowledge--”

“Fraser,” Ray said, tiredly, and he got up to make another cup of coffee. “I am not as complicated as the shape of the universe, or the nature of knowledge or whatever they like to feel confused about, all right? I should have worked out who I was a long time ago.”

\---

Ray was never a big believer in premonition. But he wonders now if maybe the hailstorm was a warning: something bad is coming. You’re not going to like it.

The rain is here as a reminder of it.

Ray Vecchio is back, the real Ray Vecchio, and Fraser -- Ray thinks he’s never seen him happier. Even if they’re stuck in this nightmare of a case. The old team is back together, and there’s no real use for Ray Kowalski anymore. Certainly no use for his shape-shifting daemon, the only reason anyone had hired him in the first place.

“You know they only wanted us because half the bullpen calls him _Mongoose_ , right?” Ray says to Jadzia, who is still resting a head on his knee. In response, she slides sideways, and takes on the form of a small grass snake.

“Oh!” Thatcher says. Ray had almost forgotten she was there. He turns his head. And before he knows it, he’s speaking. He’s tired, confused. And all that comes out is words.

“You ever think you’ve got no idea who you are?” he says, and gestures. “Like, a job ends, or you’re suddenly not with a person who -- the person who makes you who you thought you were?”

She’s not paying attention. She’s still staring at Jadzia like she just gave birth to a litter of mice in the middle of the car. Like she’s a second away from screaming.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Ray says. “I’m an undercover cop. It’s what we do.”

\---

When he has to give Ray Vecchio his desk back, his life back, it really does feel like part of him is dying. No, it’s dead. Just like that. BAM! And he doesn’t get to stick around for the fun part - no funeral or wake, no speeches about how much he meant to everyone. He’s just got to stick around to make sure the paperwork is all signed off, and then he’s out for good.

Of course, Vecchio gets it. Better than anyone else, maybe. Only takes him a second to take in Jadzia, and he’s sharp enough that Ray knows he understands. “They found me a shapeshifter, I’m honoured,” Vecchio says, later, over cups of cold, burnt coffee. He nods to Jadzia, and something inside Ray clenches, but he doesn’t know -- doesn’t want -- lets it drop.

He can’t tell if he’s being patronised or not. He hates that.

“I had a life,” Vecchio says, spreading out his hand like he’s imagining something big. Bigger than this room. This building, even. 9,000 square feet, and counting. He can’t stop talking about it -- this undercover life, this criminal life, this opulent life, so unlike anything else he’ll ever see from the inside again.

Ray Kowalski’s life only ever really filled up his own ribcage. He gets it. He really does, he thinks he gets it. This job -- he briefly had two sisters, a wide extended family. But how had he dealt with it? By avoiding them, except for special occasions, and when he had to see Frannie at work.

Not so different from how he’s always been about his own family. Except there’s no Frannie. And they don’t mind giving him the space.

He’s just repeating the same cycles in different places. Like he’s ruminating. Stuck on a puzzle. He can never stay put.

The thing is, both Rays feel like they died before their time was up. So much they wanted done. With one short word, Fraser had killed them both. An accident — it wasn’t meant to happen like this, they had so much left to do, and Ray feels like he’s dying, like part of him is dead — so why does Fraser always have to look so happy about it?

Ray Vecchio’s back in his spot, sure. But Ray Kowalski? Out on his ear. There’s no neat space for him to slot back into. His old life is still in cold storage, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want it anymore. He’s happy for it to stay there. Nobody will miss it.

Diefenbaker is happy, too. Ray can tell. He’s all over Ray Vecchio, he’s drinking from his coffee, he’s wagging his tail like he’s a normal fucking dog, and not the weirdest daemon Ray’s ever come across.

“Hey,” Ray murmurs, as Diefenbaker puts a paw on his shin. He’s just finished collecting the last of his papers up. He didn’t even know the half-wolf was nearby. But he’s always been like that -- a strange mixture of too-tactile, too pet-like, and creepily perceptive just when you least expect it.

“I’m just,” he says, but he doesn’t know what to say next. He’s written a couple of bad notes for passing his cases on -- whole lines struck out in thick black marker, and his spelling never was up to much. Jadzia is pawing at the pages, displeased.

Fraser’s in the lieu’s office with Ray Vecchio. They’ve been in there for a while, and Ray is starting to think that maybe he should just go. Dief is staring at him, and Ray doesn’t like it.

“He thinks we should stay,” Jadzia hisses at him.

“Yeah,” Ray says. Yeah, he can see that. “Sure. Help them bust the bad guys.”

As he says it, the office door opens. He’s called in. Right, one final mission.

Ray’s left in the second car, driving Fraser’s boss around. It’s fine; this is only temporary. One last gig, and then think about something else. “It’s going to be fine,” Jadzia whispers. He fingers his gun, and wishes he had his glasses. He’s sure Fraser has them. He doesn’t remember why, or when he took them. But they’re not in his pocket --

There’s no time for this. The fight is almost here. And Ray knows he’s going to miss. They can’t afford that.

\---

Jadzia bites Ray’s wrist as he inches forwards in the darkness. He covers his mouth with the hand that isn’t holding his gun -- the hand that he’s pretty sure is now streaked with his own blood -- and curses her out, as quietly as he can. “You’re supposed to be on my side,” he says, feeling hysteria bubble up inside his chest. “Why do I get to be the one with the broken daemon?”

He reaches for her, and finds that she’s holding his glasses. “ _I’m_ perfect,” she says, quiet and terrifying. “They were in the lining of your _fucking_ jacket.”

He slips them on and curses. Right, of course. Why would Fraser have had them, anyway? That wouldn’t have made any sense. They’re his. His problem.

“No time for sorry,” Ray says. “ _Sorry_.” He runs for the next corner, judging with each step whether or not it’s safe -- a good idea -- to turn, ready to shoot. Whether he’s going to get shot. Whether he will get a clear shot, or whether he’s too late.

\---

A brief image, a memory of the night before, or maybe another night entirely, Ray can’t remember, and the room is dark, and the only thing lighting it is momentary bursts of gunshot, like a thunderstorm -- he was beat, and he was almost ready to say something, to spill it all, except he couldn’t. And he had his glasses on, because there’d been someone with a gun, just a kid, and he hadn’t shot but thought he might have to, and so, glasses.

“Fraser,” he’d said. And maybe nothing else came out. Fraser looked at him, those big eyes. And he moved closer. Ray thought, for the tiniest moment, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter what Ray thought. But he’d thought -- but instead, Fraser paused and then just pushed up Ray’s glasses, which were halfway down his nose. And then he stepped back.

 _Who does that?_ Ray thinks, steadying his gun. But he’d felt it, as surely as if Fraser had touched _him_ , and not just his fucking glasses. It was like he’d burned a hole through Ray’s temple.

The room lights up again, fizzing with gunfire and bad luck, and Ray hugs the wall, cursing again. No time for this. Never. Fold it up and stick it in your shoe. He flexes the hand that isn’t holding his gun. He pushes up his glasses. He doesn’t pray.

\---

Ray collapses into a chair at the hospital and Jadzia sits on his shoulder. She’s quiet. A little blackbird, fluffing up her feathers. What does it mean that he and Ray Vecchio were both there and one of them got shot? What does it mean that Vecchio took the bullet? Is it a sign? Does one of them actually have to die in order for this mess to get cleared away? Ray doesn’t want that. Not sure he wants anything enough to see someone die for it, but definitely not this lousy job.

He’s OK. He got out fine. It doesn’t feel that way. His head’s a mess. But it’s not the time for that.

Ray watches Fraser and Dief pace. It’s not a long corridor. Big strides. They’re penned in, this space is too small. Ray can feel this moment sticking in his throat. Once again, he has no real idea what’s coming. What his next week is going to look like -- what his life is going to --

He has to keep wrenching himself away. He’s trying to avoid the problem. The problem is a bullet. The problem is blood, and Ray Vecchio bleeding out on the floor. The problem is emergency surgery, a bomb defused just in time. There was a lot of blood. They’re waiting to hear. The problem is all of these people in such a small space, bursting to see --

Ray lived his life. Took it over. Just for a little while. He was Vecchio’s decoy, a half-baked protection scheme. He was there to make sure Ray Vecchio didn’t get killed. But he doesn’t know him. Not really. And now he might die anyway.

Maybe if he’d not lost his glasses in his own clothes -- maybe if he’d made a couple of those too-wide shots --

Frannie’s here too. There’s a flurry of doctor’s coats, clipboards, cardboard walls and doors sliding open and snapping shut. Ray is so tired. He wants to close his eyes, and wake up in a different life. Or at least a different week. Last month, maybe. But he can’t do that. Fraser’s here. He wants some fresh air, but he can’t move, he can’t leave. He stays put.

Jadzia’s feathers tickle against his neck, his collarbone. He shakes when she moves. He still doesn’t move.

\---

Ray Vecchio is going to be OK. He’s going to survive this. The doctors said so. Ray repeats this in his head. The last two years of his life were not in vain. They meant something. Ray Vecchio is alive. He’s not going to die.

Frannie and Fraser stand together, overwhelmed, and this room is definitely too small for the two of them. Dief whines, and keeps circling around them. Val -- the llama -- is wedged in the door of Ray Vecchio’s hotel room, waiting for them to part.

Ray tries not to watch them, but it’s hard. It’s hard not to hear, hard not to want to help -- hard not to find himself taking on the role he’s been living, the role he lived. He can’t take it anymore -- the misunderstandings, the shyness, the feeling of things left unsaid.

“Frannie,” he says, putting paid to the lie that he’s not really there, not really part of this. “He likes you.” He stares down at the linoleum floor.

The adrenaline has completely gone - from the chase, the shoot-out, of rushing Vecchio to the hospital and waiting to hear the verdict, what’s the word, that’s not right, the prognosis. Yeah. Ray feels like somebody’s stuck a pin in him -- probably somewhere embarrassing and painful -- and let all the air out. He doesn’t know what to do now.

On the other side of the window, the sky is hazy blue. He’s not sure if it’s cloudy or if the window’s just in need of a good scrubbing. He hasn’t had time to look up.

Ray needs some air. Jadzia is grooming her feathers over and over, a nervous tic, and he knows she needs it too. In the split-second before he stands up, his phone rings. It’s a piece of junk, going off at a time like this. And the call is for Fraser. Of course.

Every time, every single time Ray thinks this all might have halted, that the world might have stopped for a few moments, not stopped even, just paused to give him some goddamn space -- it never has. It’s always hurtling ahead again. It never, ever stops.

He’s not sure if he wants off or not. He’d need more time to work through that.

\---

Ray can’t move. He’s wedged against Fraser and they’re surrounded by ice, and the ice is closing in, except it isn’t, and it doesn’t matter, because they’re trapped there anyway.

Dief didn’t fall, so Ray hopes he’s going for help. He’s not sure how far he can travel from Fraser, but far enough. All that training up north -- they’ve had to rely on their separation before. Growing up, Ray had thought it was only witches who could survive such a parting.

He stares at Fraser, taking gulps of freezing air. And he holds Jadzia to his chest. He can feel her hot heart beating. Her thick winter fur. Fraser’s eyelashes are so long, frosted with tiny shards of ice.

His lips are red. Witches, Ray thinks, hysterically. And then he starts to lift Jadzia in the air, like she’s a flare-gun. She scrabbles against his fingers, trying to get good purchase. “You need to fly,” Ray says, although she knows that already. His chest aches. His entire body aches, or is too numb to ache. But at the foresight of what’s about to come -- how much separation will Jadzia and Ray’s bodies bear? But flight offers more than land alone.

Jadzia is a white-tailed eagle. She nips at Ray’s index finger, harshly, drawing blood even through his glove. And then she’s rising, rising, screaming into the air for help, bright-red blood staining her beak.

If Ray wasn’t unable to move, he’d fall to the ground. Instead he looks at Fraser some more, losing spots in his vision. He can feel the blood starting to stiffen and freeze in his glove, against the heat of the gash in his finger.

Delirious with pain, cold, and the feeling of staring at Fraser and finding Fraser is staring back, intensely, beneath those witch’s eyelashes - Ray wants to sing. All he can think of doing now is to sing. It bubbles up in his lungs. But he’s hoarse, and he can’t trust his breathing without Jadzia here. He closes his eyes, and he can feel her in the air. Loopy with the height. Holding on to some kind of current or magnet. Looking for something. Trying to find salvation.

“It’s an adventure up there, huh,” he says. Struggling to get the words out. “Always wanted a grand adventure.” He can’t believe he’s going to die and this is the closest he’s ever got. What lousy luck. He can’t even breathe enough to sing. At least last time he was facing down death he got to _sing_.

“Ray,” Fraser says. And Ray can see it in the lines of his face, the creases by his eyes, the corners of his mouth -- Fraser feels it too, this piercing pain. Diefenbaker must be very far away. or maybe -- if he always feels it, wouldn’t Ray have noticed before now?

\---

Much later, a different day, when the sun is shining and it’s only minus twenty out, Ray asks Fraser if it always hurts that bad. “No,” Fraser says, rubbing his hands against the cup of coffee Ray’s just handed him. Ray’s been scared of this question ever since that day, trapped in the ice, and he’s finally asked it, and he’s not sure why. Maybe it’s the one stray lock of hair that Fraser hasn’t managed to smooth away yet. Ray’s a sucker for it. “Usually it just feels like a slight tug. A reminder. I was looking at you, realising the depths of the pain you were experiencing...”

“Well, that must have sucked,” Ray says, relieved. “It hurt, Fraser.” He presses against his chest with one hand.

Dief and Jadzia are wrestling on the rug. Half-wolf and, for the moment, some kind of snow-white wildcat. “Barely domesticated enough to be allowed inside our nice toasty cabin,” as Ray finds himself saying when they knock into his ankle and make him spill a large quantity of coffee onto the carpet and a rueful Diefenbaker, who starts to whine instead of using his _words_.

Ray combs his fingers through the patch of fur worst hit, and although he’s not looking at Fraser, he can feel him stand to attention. “I don’t know why I always get taken in by this act. You’re not even a real dog,” he grouses, happily, as Dief licks his hand. “Just sit by the fire and it’ll dry. Or get Fraser to wash you. See if I care.”

When he turns away, Jadzia starts to lick Diefenbaker clean.

“Well,” Fraser says, clearing his throat as he makes another pot of coffee. “It was a very invigorating day...”

“But you agree it sucked. Yeah, me too.” Ray says. “Although cuddling with you inside our tent later was pretty nice compensation.”

\---

After all that, Fraser hangs up the call, gives Ray his phone back, and tells him that they’ve got somewhere to be. And Ray blinks once, like they’ve skipped a step. He thinks of sitting in the car next to Fraser’s boss, Thatcher, who had barely seemed to register that he even existed. And he remembers staring at the rain, and thinking, yep, this is it then.

“We’re still partners?” he asks, a rushing in his ears.

“If you’ll have me,” Fraser says. It’s as simple as that? But it’s not, of course it’s not. But there’s no time for that now. There’s only forward. And Ray hoping again that the other half of his brain will catch up when it’s fucking ready.

\---

Somewhere in the north of Canada -- Ray’s not even sure which province they’re in right now -- sitting under the stars, Ray pokes at a campfire with his most hopeful air, and a skewer he wants to stick some marshmallows on already. He’s not had much alone time with Fraser that wasn’t dedicated to wilderness survival or fighting crime in what feels like a thousand million years, and he doesn’t want to waste it blurting out bullshit on a stomach empty of toasted marshmallows.

“Maybe leaving Chicago will help me figure out all of this,” Ray says, around his first mouthful. Much better. Easier to get the words out. He waves the skewer around and scatters some ashes. Dief yelps.

Jadzia is circling them, somewhere in the air above. Not too high, not too far. Ray can feel a pull, but not much more. She’ll be back soon.

“All of this?” Fraser asks, once he’s finished running whatever translation programme he has installed in his brain that can understand Ray when he’s talking with a mouth full of food. Ray thinks he’s going to keep going on with some pedantic facts about Canada, pretending to not know what Ray means by _this_. But he doesn’t. He stops, and looks at Ray, like he’s expecting an answer. Like he’s listening.

Huh. Ray guesses he is listening. That’s a thing Fraser does, sometimes. “Yeah, y’know,” Ray says, chewing on the thought as well as the marshmallows. “Like, how does a grown man get to be pushing forty and still not have a single clue who he is, or what matters?”

“I think you have some clue, Ray,” Fraser says. “For instance, when you made sure Ms Botrelle was exonerated, and not executed for a crime she didn’t commit.”

Ray feels a shiver over his scalp. “Yeah, but I’m the reason that had to be -- I’m not arguing about this one again,” he says, and rubs at his hair. He doesn’t want this to get twisted. “Maybe I took on the job because I thought it would give me something -- like it would tell me what to do, what’s right from wrong, what life’s supposed to look like. But I don’t think any of that fits. I don’t know it ever did.”

Fraser’s looking up at the sky. “I’ve often felt at odds with the constraints this life requires,” he says.

Ray snorts. “Yeah,” he says. “But you break out of them, no trouble. _Why’s the mountie always gotta jump out of a window when there’s a perfectly good door?_ Vecchio wrote something like that on the notes I was given when I took over the job. He ain’t wrong. Not on that.”

Fraser’s eyebrows do something complicated, but his tone doesn’t change. “Sometimes the window is more expedient,” he says. “It’s not a theoretical exercise. Ray Vecchio knows that, and you surely know that too.”

“Yeah yeah, sometimes the laws and procedures are wrong,” Ray says. But Fraser’s not finished.

“I’m not talking about the job,” Fraser says. “I meant. Well, I think I meant, _life_.”

Ray nods his head forward, and feels tiredness radiating up from the back of his skull. It’s a heavy weight. “I’m not entirely sure how to keep on going forward,” he confesses, and reaches into the bag for the last of the marshmallows. “Dief, you been eating these?”

Diefenbaker gives him a reproachful look. Yeah, he’s no dog. Not really. Ray knows that. But Ray’s _sure_ he eats Ray’s food sometimes all the same, just like a dog might. So Fraser might be sticking doggedly to his dehydrated meats or whatever else he likes to eat that doesn’t seem to have a single ounce of joy in it. But Ray’s not so sure about Dief. “Hey, I’m not mad,” Ray says. “Feel like we could all use some.”

He hears Jadzia squawk. She lands on his shoulder, smaller than she was when she took flight a little while ago. And she takes the last marshmallow from between his fingers, just like that. Fair’s fair. Ray can’t be too pissy about it.

“I dunno, before I was always telling myself, y’know, at least sometimes I get to save a life, even if I can’t get my wife to speak to me, or can’t get my own divorce lawyer to return my calls. But this job’s ended, I don’t want to go back to my old precinct. That life sucked. Most exciting thing that happened there was getting shot at.” _And nobody ever looked at me_ , he thinks. Not without wincing.

“I wonder,” Fraser says. “In a way... I wonder if I am going back. I’m not sure I’m particularly hoping to end up back where I used to be, either... Can we find our way home without going backwards? I want to believe so.”

“It’s a big country,” Ray says. “Hey, listen, we’re out to find something new, you and me. We’re not going back.”

“Well, Ray,” Fraser starts, and Ray grins at that tone of voice. Good and infuriating, and Fraser knows it. “I would hardly call anything about the Franklin expedition at this point _new_.”

“Yeah yeah, who cares,” Ray says. “Nobody’s seen it in what, a hundred years, the big one-fifty? That’s almost come right back round to new again. For me anyway. I guess probably you too, unless you’re really holding out on me, and you’re planning on suddenly whipping out the hand when I’m least expecting it. Don’t do that, dead bodies freak me out. Limbs that’ve been, what, disem-, disemboweled--”

“Disembodied, Ray.”

“Yeah I think a hand on its own might freak me out even more. You keep it away from me, I’ll be happy enough seeing it at a good distance.”

“I have packed _no_ mummified limbs,” Fraser says, although he starts to theatrically look around him and talk like he’s putting on a play for children at the park. “Nooo dead bodies. Nothing but... a _handful_ of ghost stories.”

Dief is really into it, and Ray feels himself slowly sink down as Fraser talks total nonsense, an ermine Jadzia resting under his chin.

\---

A few weeks into the quest for Franklin’s hand, Ray accidentally falls off a small cliff and into a large drift of snow. Fraser is back at camp, waiting for Ray to bring back wood and a pot full of snow to melt for coffee. Ray stares upwards, but he’s trapped under so much snow. His chest feels heavy. He wonders where Jadzia is. Then he feels her squirming against him, nipping at his hand, his fingers, his wrist. She’s a small frenzied ball of fur. She’s a warm weight against his hip. She’s buried down there.

“No,” he says, tilting his chin down towards his chest to try and avoid getting a mouthful of snow. “No, you’re not biting me this time. You think I want to bleed out down here?” As he speaks, he’s trying to get her to the surface, cupping his arm around her and lifting his arm up, up, up.

After only a few seconds, she bursts up, and keeps going. Ray catches a glimpse of her black feathers, and sighs. “Yeah, uh-huh,” he says. “You remembered you can fly.”

After a few loops and screeches in the vague direction of the tent -- it’s started snowing again and visibility isn’t great out here -- Jadzia lands back down by Ray and starts trying to dig him free. She’s doing a weirdly spot-on imitation of Diefenbaker, and to be honest if Ray wasn’t so panicky and freezing and shocked he would be more freaked out by it. “Dogs really nature’s best diggers?” he asks, his mouth numb and tired, and it feels like he’s only slipping down further. Every time he tries to move the sky recedes further away. It’s not fair. The day was only just beginning.

His eyes are starting to blur even more than usual, and he feels so heavy. But he keeps trying to blink the snowflakes away. He only realises way too late that it’s not just his blurry eyesight - it’s not just Jadzia digging him out. There’s -- there are two of them. “Dief,” he says. Or tries to say. Diefenbaker whines, staring at him with those unnervingly clever eyes, and presses his nose against Ray’s face for a moment, then starts digging again. Ray has one arm free now, and he rests it lightly against Dief’s back for a moment, then looks for Jadzia and rubs his gloved hand against the fur at her neck.

That’s when Fraser arrives with a rope to pull Ray free. He’s flustered, harrowed. “Survived worse, you and me,” Ray reminds him, later on, when he’s wrapped up in a lot of blankets by the fire.

“Together we did,” Fraser agrees. It’s not been so long since the ice. Ray has a talent for falling into holes up here.

Ray doesn’t remind Fraser that maybe he’s seen worse before that, even. Shot more than once. Divorced. Held at gunpoint in a bank robbery when he was just a kid. He was more certain of death then than he ever was today. “Ah, I knew you were coming,” he says. “Dief got there first, though.”

“I was there,” Jadzia corrects him, whispering into his ear. He bats her away.

“It takes a village,” Ray says.

\---

At the end of the journey, when Ray has had so many dreams about dead men under the snow reaching up for him, and every time Fraser and Diefenbaker pull him back at the last second, Fraser makes Ray a cup of coffee with two sugars, sits him down in Fraser’s cabin, and looks at him like he’s interviewing him for a job.

It freaks Ray out and he’s not even opened his mouth yet. He bets Fraser’s got a whole speech prepared, and he’s not going to like it. _Go back to your life_ , he feels like Fraser’s going to say. You can’t stay here. You’re an adult man, you can’t run forever.

That’s not what Fraser says at all. He takes a deep breath, and the words rush out. “I was wondering if you’d like to stay up here for a while. Instead of going back to Chicago, I mean.”

“Here?” Ray asks. He sweeps his eyes around Fraser’s cabin, full of what Ray assumes are largely his parents’ things. “With you?”

“That is to say--” Fraser says. “If you’d like to. Yes.”

Ray grabs his hand and kicks lightly at where Dief is curled up with Jadzia under the table, enjoying the warmth of a cabin stocked with firewood and cans of beans and soup. “Of course I do,” Ray says. His voice is tickling against his throat. “What do you think all that junk about not knowing what I’m doing was about? It wasn’t about this. It was about,” and here he flails his arms in the absence of being able to come up with a good summary, “shit, I don’t know, it was about everything back home. Chicago PD, deadbeat divorced cop with too many bullet-holes. None of that matters out here. Unless it does to you.”

Actually, the bullet scars do matter, because the cold makes them itch like hell, and Ray swears they move around on his body from one day to the next.

“No, of course not,” Fraser says, but he still sounds unsure of what Ray means. Ray thinks about leaning across the table and pressing a kiss to his mouth. He touches his mouth, thinking about it, and about how it’s not a very wise idea.

“Because this all matters very much to me,” Ray says, looking around the cabin again. “Being here with you. I think that’s got to be what matters. It feels like it to me.”

Fraser rubs his mouth now. Ray feels like his brain’s on fire. Like suddenly he’s the one trying to convince Fraser to let him stay, even though Fraser’s the one who invited _him_.

“Good,” Fraser says. “Because, as you can probably tell, this cabin is not in a particularly habitable state. We need to replace half of the roof, and probably look into getting a new plumbing system installed, and I should probably have a clear-out of the things my father left behind--”

Ray nods, arms crossed loosely. “How long do you see all that taking, give or take?”

Fraser blinks. Ray has not mistaken that look. Busted. This is not just about re-varnishing the floorboards or whatever the fuck Fraser thinks he needs to say to convince Ray. “Because I don’t particularly plan on leaving till you throw me out the window,” Ray says. He grabs Fraser’s hand again, and doesn’t let go this time. “That good with you?”

“Yes,” Fraser says. “Ray -- yes.”

\---

During the clear-out of Fraser Sr.’s old things, Ray finds a bundle of letters addressed to Frobisher. As he looks through them to see if there’s much that seems worth saving, he realises they’re all drafts of the same letter -- the letter he wrote to let his best friend know that the baby had been born. The writing is blunt and honest -- the first page starts, once all the greetings are over and done with, with the words _Benton is a scrawny, red-faced little thing._

“Hasn’t changed,” Ray says, and as he goes to fold the papers up to keep them safe for when Fraser returns from his hike he notices Diefenbaker’s name. He smooths the paper down again, and finds himself reading a couple more lines.

_It was a difficult labour, and I’m afraid he was born slightly wrong. Daemon’s a boy, too, by the name of Diefenbaker. Not sure there’s much we can do now except try to raise him to be as upright as we can._

Ray holds the pages of a letter he’s not sure was ever sent, and he doesn’t know whether to tear it into a million pieces and burn it, or if that would be somehow unforgivable. He’s shaking, slightly. He knows what kids say about children with daemons of the _wrong_ sex. But that’s petty, childhood stuff. It doesn’t, shouldn’t ever mean anything more than that.

Ray remembers being eighteen and wondering if everyone found applying for college so difficult; remembers not knowing what to do when application forms asked for his daemon’s form. Remembers how Stella was his only real friend then, because she was the only person who didn’t treat him badly for the way he and Jadzia were. And how he’d been so angry that he’d burnt himself out from within. And he’d ruined that relationship because of it. He knows he did.

Ray also remembers being a young kid who teased other kids for all kinds of shitty things. He remembers when it became apparent that he wasn’t normal; how it felt like he’d fallen into a different world. How he’d been hyper-aware of how everyone looked at him. Even if they didn’t mean anything by it. How that was the problem, wasn’t it. Wasn’t that still half the problem.

He puts down the papers. They’re full of crossings-out. But the entire paragraph, the line about Fraser being born slightly wrong. That’s clear, meticulously written. Not scratched through.

It’s not Ray’s to burn.

\---

“I found something,” Ray says, as they’re tidying away the remains of their dinner of toast and tinned sausage-and-beans. “Looks like a letter your old man was writing. I don’t, uh,” he hesitates. “It’s not a nice letter,” he says, trailing off, not looking to explain.

Fraser sighs. “It’s the letter announcing my birth, I suppose?” he says.

“Yep,” Ray says, half relieved and all sad that Fraser’s seen it, read it already.

“I forgot I’d kept that,” Fraser says, pensively.

“I could burn it,” Ray says. “Be really happy to.”

“My father,” Fraser says, straightforward and tired, “was in many ways a very old-fashioned man. He had been brought up to believe that to be born with a daemon of the wrong sex -- that is, the same sex as the child -- was at best a defect that would need to be overcome, and at worst some kind of moral failing on behalf of the child and his parents.”

Ray doesn’t know what to say to this. “That’s the worst way--”

“I know,” Fraser says, and Ray feels horrible for bringing it up at all. Fraser shrugs. The gesture feels wrong on him somehow, like defeat. “He was not an attentive father, and I found out young that he was wrong. _There’s more in Heaven and Earth_...”

“Did you,” Ray murmurs, and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his sweater.

“Yes,” Fraser says. “Having a daemon of the same sex is not so uncommon in every population or community, and it really doesn’t indicate much more -- besides, it relies on a very basic understanding and ignores so many other -- it’s just --”

“I know,” Ray says. They’re standing in Fraser’s little kitchen, and the sweater Ray’s borrowed from Fraser is rolled up just above the wrists. “You don’t think I know that?”

“I _know_ ,” Fraser says, helpless, and they’re still not actually saying what they know, just parroting that one phrase back and forth in reassurance and something like terror.

Ray puts his hands on the kitchen counter of either side of Fraser. “Even if it did indicate anything,” he says. “I wouldn’t care.”

“I know that,” Fraser says, again. It’s like he’s saying, _What do you want? What do you mean?_

“Stop saying that,” Ray says. He kisses Fraser, hard on the mouth, then pulls back. “I just care about you,” he says. “That’s what I care about, Fraser.”

Fraser makes a noise in his throat like he’s about to regurgitate a hairball. It is not what Ray wants to hear right now. But then he’s pulling Ray in for another kiss, and then he’s kissing Ray’s cheek, ear, throat, tugging on his shirt. “Thank you,” he says, into Ray’s collarbone, although Ray’s not sure what he’s thanking him for, exactly. “Thank god for that.”

\----

The longer he spends in Canada, the more Ray wonders if Jadzia is going to settle as a bird one day. Would he even notice? Of course he would. But she spends more time in the air every day, it feels like.

He thinks of witches’ daemons again, and laughs. Neither he or Fraser really look the part. He can admit that now. 

“I think she likes the freedom,” he says to Fraser, one day. What he means is, _I do too_. He’s lucky -- they both are. He can hear

“I think she always has,” Fraser says. It’s that simple. Ray stares at him, and thinks of all of the times Jadzia changing has helped them escape certain injury or embarrassment or _death_.

Ray remembers once, years ago, trying to explain to someone -- he can’t remember who, just that it was raining outside the car and he was cold and wrung-out -- that he felt as if... without Fraser, he didn’t know who he was. He wonders sometimes if his following Fraser here wasn’t healthy on that level. Maybe he’s just replaced his own uncertainty with another person’s certainty. Is that a good thing?

But no, no. Fraser's right. Ray can leave whenever he wants. He just doesn't want to. That's the difference.

“You’re a freak,” Ray says, as his eyes trace Jadzia, flying loops in the air above them. “How d’you do that? You say one line and you’ve stuck a needle right through me.” He clutches at his heart, all drama.

“You look quite whole to me,” Fraser says.

“Yeah,” Ray says, tugging on a loose lock of Fraser’s hair so he bows his head slightly forward, then kissing his brow. “You do too. Not that it matters to me.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fic which deals with prejudice, including internalised feelings of prejudice and shame, and it includes a reference to a time where prejudice influenced bad parenting. this fictional prejudice is not directly mapped onto a real-world prejudice, but i was thinking about queerness and disability when writing it (i am both queer and chronically ill).
> 
> this fic also deals with some of the aftermath of a traumatic event a character experiences as a child, but only goes into the actual event in canon-typical amounts of detail (think of the Ds episode eclipse).
> 
> i have also taken various worldbuilding liberties in writing about the daemons. so any inaccuracies you come across regarding how daemons work are probably intentional. 
> 
> for instance: i know that the line is that in the HDM universe, children who experience traumatic events at a young age are likely to experience their daemon settling in one form at that young age. i thought, that does not seem like something that would always be the case. i also thought many of the other canon essentialist ideas about what different daemons "mean" were kind of _bad_. 
> 
> i'm a very fun person.
> 
> this was a very personal story for me to write, and it took me well over a year to finish. i apologise for any weird inconsistencies in style. i might try and rewrite it at some point in the future, or i might at least try and write some kind of sequel with more daemon hijinks than managed to find their way into this story.


End file.
